Dolly

by Anita Brookner

  5

  After the school choir had sung the last school song (‘On with you, Chronos, onward Charioteer’) I gathered up my possessions, said goodbye to form mistress, music mistress and headmistress, and left with Marigold. She was a sympathetic friend at this time, as she has been ever since, but her sympathy was always limited by her intense practicality, which was to make her such an excellent nurse. We wandered down the King’s Road to her house in Bramerton Street, where I had looked forward to spending such time as I felt entitled to, although I was aware that I had fewer claims on my own time now than I had had in the past, when I was free to wander all day, if I felt inclined to do so, and when this ruminative behaviour was accepted as entirely natural by my ruminative parents. They themselves seemed to spend their lives in a state of delicate preoccupation, emerging from this only to bestow distracted and loving smiles on each other, as if they shared a spirit life which had no need of words.

  Although benefiting from their intense and genuine if absent-minded sweetness I had always felt myself to be made of somewhat coarser material, liable to make more noise, to have more subversive thoughts than either of my parents were likely to entertain, and to be excluded from their particularly rapt communion, which to me (and I am almost sure to them as well) was untainted by any gross manifestation of sexuality. If they ever came together, as I imagine they must have done from time to time, it would have been in the nature of a pre-Raphaelite painting, in which two almost identical figures, barely distinguishable as a man and a woman, fully dressed, and with abundant flowing hair, press their faces together intently, and gaze into each other’s eyes as if sealing a pact, as if after long travail, and as if attaining that unity which is the stuff of legend, of myth, and of religion too, whereas most lovers desire a certain otherness in their partners, and would look askance on the fairy sadness of these debilitated creatures, whose silent closeness they would nevertheless envy once their own more robust appetites were satisfied. I have seen couples in the Tate Gallery looking at such pictures with intense irritation, as if they set an impossible standard of behaviour, which of course they do, since such behaviour lies in the domain of courtly love, which few can sustain. I have followed such couples through the gallery to the entrance hall, and seen them choose their postcards. For a second, their postcards in their hands, they look like disappointed children, until cheered up by the thought of tea, to which they walk with a brisker step and a renewed confidence. Such is the faith one places in the body, after a disconcerting confrontation with the soul.

  My parents never expressed a need for anything which they did not already possess, from which I deduce that they were perfectly happy. In their inability to imagine other partners, other forms of felicity, other appetites—and I emphasise that this was a genuine inability—they were truly innocent, Adam and Eve before the Fall and the Expulsion from Eden. Now my mother had been expelled, but without having eaten of the apple: expelled in a state of disastrous innocence, and therefore doubly vulnerable. I saw that it would fall to my lot to protect her, and I felt unequal to the task. I loved my parents dearly, and contemplated their life together as a miracle which I might never be able to reproduce on my own account, but once my father had died I knew that something was finished in my life as well as in my mother’s, for I had lost my freedom, or rather exchanged that freedom for perpetual anxiety. I did not then know that anxiety, of an existential kind, can attach to freedom itself. I was too young for metaphysical speculations, although I had read Simone de Beauvoir and had a vague sense of the wrongs done to women, particularly to daughters. Thus I was not quite equipped to deal with my mother’s grief, and felt perhaps a certain impatience. The impatience was a useful strategem for disguising my most unmanageable sensation, which was one of dread.

  ‘What will you do?’ asked Marigold, as we turned into her street.

  ‘Get a job, I suppose,’ I replied, as negligently as I could. I felt obliged to meet her practicality with some of my own, although I did not see how I was to be practical all the time, and would have welcomed a discussion of my feelings, of which I was ashamed. I was acutely aware of the division between what I really felt and what I thought I should feel. I affected a cynical despair over my renunciation of three years at Cambridge, whereas what I really mourned was the loss of a protected childhood: I did not know that this was permitted. Cambridge had never had more than a token reality for me, for I had always imagined that life would continue unmodified by either time or distance. That is the proper attribute of the limitless world of childhood, whereas I was, at the time of my father’s death, a belated adolescent. I still looked young, as the child of such parents was perhaps bound to look. I had no beauty to speak of, for I was thin and pale, with only hair of an unusual light, almost white blonde, to distinguish me. My intense inwardness gave me a disconsolate air, which had prompted many hissed reprimands and instructions from Dolly. I was aware that she disliked me: I was also aware that she was genuinely ignorant of this fact. If she had been questioned on this point she would have replied that she was very fond of me, but that she wished I would do something about my appearance. I was so used to this sort of genuine subterfuge—always an interesting indication of character—that I took no more notice of Dolly than she did of me.

  Nevertheless my attitude towards her hardened at this time. I felt that she should be taking on certain family duties instead of amusing herself. I felt that instead of entertaining my mother with stories of her bridge parties she should have been communing with her, listening to her, enquiring of her health and her feelings. This was to misjudge Dolly’s capacities and her desires. Dolly was a working woman, as I came only later to understand. She had never ceased to be a working woman. Her work consisted of bettering her situation, making her way in a world which she rightly judged to be hostile. My mother’s feelings—my own feelings—did not come within her remit. If questioned on this point (but I was not old enough, was never old enough to pose such a question) she would have shrugged and replied that she was a widow herself, that most of her friends were widows, but that there was no point in dwelling on the matter; it was a fact of life.

  Her opacity served her well: no one was in a position to criticise her, for as she constantly reminded one she had had a hard life and had refused to burden others with her misfortunes. Her irritating optimism was, she thought, a hallmark of endurance, indeed of excellence. Besides, she was too busy to linger over our situation, which she continued to view as relatively benign, as I suppose it was. While she was making herself agreeable to her acquaintances we continued to sit at home, stricken, as she saw it, by a fate which was no more or no less than the fate common to all mortals. She had been there before us. This, she seemed to think, conferred on her a natural superiority, a superiority which could never be called into question.

  Her busyness was mysterious, and given her circumstances, meritorious. At any event it kept her in good spirits. At times it struck me that she was actually happy, yet I did not see how this could be. The company of women, to whom she was indifferent, seemed to elevate her mood to a point at which I even suspected that she had made the acquaintance of a man, and that a second marriage was in the offing. She said nothing of this, but had acquired a new liveliness, which was painfully out of place in our reduced household. Yet who would grudge her this new vivacity? Certainly not my mother, with her touching faith in marriage, any marriage. Certainly not myself, who longed at that time for someone—anyone—to be happy. Yet Dolly said nothing, merely gave out unimportant signals, such as an increased attention to her appearance, and by association to ours. I found this irksome, but had to concede her the right. She was a handsome woman, and the contrast between her full-blown expansiveness and my mother’s shrinking pallor was too plain for me to ignore. I longed for the breath of life that Dolly brought in with her, yet within minutes of her arrival she had managed to annoy me all over again.

  I was grateful to her for visiting my mother from time
to time. She would arrive in her hired car, with a full complement of uplifting thoughts and examples, rather like an old-time evangelist. The whole cast of my mother’s grief was foreign to her, and I think slightly repulsive to her, as it was even to me. This did not mean that there was a rapprochement between Dolly and myself at this time: indeed, I went to a great deal of trouble to be out of the house when she was expected, leaving Miss Lawlor to cope with the bags of Annie’s leftovers which were thrust into her hands and my mother to listen meekly to Dolly’s stories of her own triumphs over adversity. In this way my mother got to hear of every good deed that Dolly had ever performed, and in addition of every compliment she had ever received. This afforded my mother a certain gentle amusement, although she soon fell into a morbid habit of censuring any sign of an unbecoming levity. For her part Dolly eventually ran out of inspirational material, and even felt a whisper of annoyance that her own example was not being followed and her own advice not applied. This may have been why she took to timing her visits to coincide with the weekends, when I could hardly pretend to be out looking for a job. It was not desire for my company which prompted these weekend visits so much as intense irritation. The irritation was felt for my mother but was passed on to me as being a more worthy recipient. ‘If only you’d do something with your hair!’ she would complain. ‘After all, Jane, you’re about to go out into the world; you’ll want to look attractive. Men don’t like a glum expression.’ There would follow the admonition to wear an expression of rapturous enjoyment. ‘Singing and dancing, Jane! Always let them think of you as singing and dancing!’

  I have no idea where this image came from, but it was dear to Dolly’s heart. I think it dated from her youth, from her nights at the Crillon with the Americans; I think she looked with pity and contempt on any young person who did not enjoy such a youth. Dolly’s saving grace, the key to her confidence in herself and her message to the world, was her faith in pleasure. Where the possibility of pleasure was seen to be non-existent her valiant optimism dwindled into impotent annoyance, and she could be seen to be making active preparations to leave the scene, her hands grasping her bag and relinquishing it, or adjusting the pearl studs at her ears or the neckline of her dress, at which she directed a complacent downward glance from time to time. My impression was that she could have been appeased if I had in any way resembled Dolly herself, which meant being greedy, alluring, and prompt, given to discussion of female concerns, sexily provocative, generous with stories of boyfriends and boyfriends’ prospects. For mention of sex or love—on her part, not on mine—always led to some sort of speculation as to financial advantage. Her interest in money was fathomless. Although living well herself, she was, in her view, not living well enough. What frustration she felt at this state of affairs came my way with increasing regularity.

  ‘Time you found work, Jane,’ she would say. ‘Time you brought some money in. Not that you need it, of course.’ This remark would be followed by a little laugh, which contained both resentment and anticipation, for it became clear to me that she regarded herself as my mother’s eventual legatee, by which time I would have a job which would satisfy my modest needs and make me providentially self-sufficient. Since I was so deficient in sexual attraction, her argument might have gone, I could be relegated to that unfortunate sub-species which devoted itself to getting on with the world’s work. I would no doubt wear cardigans and flat shoes, and Dolly could safely wash her hands of me, since I had proved to be so backward in taking her advice.

  Oddly enough my mother did not read between the lines of Dolly’s concern but chose to trust only that part of it which was genuine. For there was a certain rough affection there, for my mother at least, although this affection was mixed with an almost intolerable condescension, which my mother would not have recognised even if it had been brought to her notice. She seemed to regard Dolly as a source of life, the life which was no longer permitted to her to enjoy, and on Sunday evenings she would rouse herself from her almost permanent position in a corner of the sofa and go into my father’s study to telephone Dolly. I would hear the vigorous clacking of Dolly’s voice, interspersed with my mother’s wistful interrogations. As far as I could judge Dolly was as perfunctory as ever in enquiring after my mother, regarding the fact that she was on the other end of the telephone as sufficient proof of her concern. She had almost no curiosity, and like many obtuse people prided herself on her knowledge of human nature. She was certainly conversant with the murkier wellsprings of natural conduct. Thus she never asked me any questions more searching than whether I had found work or boyfriends, preferably both. When I purposely offered a blank face and a negative reply she would turn away in something like disgust.

  For this reason I preferred to spend the remainder of that summer in Marigold’s house, where her great-aunts were in monumental but ever-active residence, spring-cleaning the bedrooms over the family’s protestations, turning out daily batches of delicious cakes, willing to cook chips for Marigold’s brother Oliver if he came in looking hungry, or sometimes, formidably arrayed, having a day in town, which meant a day at Selfridges, from which they returned by public transport, despite being weighed down by several shopping bags. These excellent women regarded me with the deepest concern, which I found shamefully acceptable, since it was accompanied by a desire for my wellbeing which I no longer found at home. ‘Sit down, dear,’ Kate or Nell would say. ‘Marigold, give Jane that wee cushion for her back. Will you take a scone, Jane?’ To take was their favourite verb, although no two people could have been more giving. ‘Will you take a cup of tea, Mary?’ was a question regularly put to Marigold’s mother when she came home from school. ‘Will I put the kettle on?’ By the same token one of them might remark to the other, ‘I hear Mrs Wishart took another stroke,’ to which Kate or Nell might reply, ‘Poor wee thing,’ although the Mrs Wishart in question might have been seventy-five years old and a menace to her unfortunate neighbours.

  They were such good women, so tireless on everyone’s behalf, so blameless in pursuit of their duty. Even when exhausted by a day’s shopping, and resting swollen ankles on small footstools, they congratulated everyone on their time well spent. ‘Such a good day,’ they would reassure their nephew, Marigold’s father, as he sat becalmed by further scones. ‘We managed to match those pillowcases at Selfridges. We took our lunch there.’ This meant that they had eaten their lunch there, not that they had carried it in with them. ‘Have you had a sufficiency, Peter?’ Swallowing a last mouthful of superfluous scone, their nephew would assure them that he had. ‘Then we’ll away to bed. Just give me that cup and plate, Mary. No, no, Nell will put them under the tap. Will you be taking anything more this evening? No? Then we’ll away to bed. Goodnight, then.’

  It was a giant step from this affecting cordiality to the new loneliness of my home, where my mother sat virtually silent in the corner of the sofa. For a time I endured this with her, until my natural energies reasserted themselves. Then I devoted myself to cheering her up, and for a while, a brief blessed interval in our reduced life together, I succeeded. In this I was greatly aided by television, that friend of lonely hearts, that comfort of the oppressed and the depressed. In the daytime, when I knew she was safe with Miss Lawlor, who would see that she ate lunch, I was free to roam around London, with or without Marigold: in the evening I would ask her, ‘Is there anything good on tonight?’ ‘Jane does so love television,’ I heard her tell John Pickering, who came to see us from time to time. He looked at me strangely, as if he understood my manoeuvres. ‘I watch for her sake, really. As you know, John, my husband only cared for the news, and sometimes not even for that. We listened to music, mostly. But Jane is young; she needs a brighter life than the one I can give her. And sometimes the programmes are quite entertaining.’ For her sake I sat through game shows and quizzes, in which she seemed to take an innocent delight. This disturbed me, as if I had detected an advancing puerility. I kept a watch on this, and at times of lowered morale, or when I w
as very tired, my suspicions were confirmed. My mother seemed to go straight from one condition to another, from the obedient debility of the daytime, when she would creep about the flat, exchanging mild words with Miss Lawlor, to the factitious excitement of the evening, when she could look forward to entertainment at a level which made no demands on her and which all too frequently treated her as the child she was fast becoming.

  I would get home at about six o’clock to find a lavish meal prepared for me. I would be bustled into the kitchen, as if there were little time to lose. A plate of chicken stew or some elaborate casserole would be put down in front of me, while my mother went into the drawing-room to switch on the television, as if my homecoming were merely a pretext or a signal, after which she could enjoy the rest of the evening undisturbed. But this is not quite fair: she would make the odd journey into the kitchen to see if I were enjoying my dinner. At these times there was a look of girlish love on her face. ‘Is it nice, darling? Violet and I thought you needed something hot after your day out.’ This referred to my idle and almost unbearably aimless day, which my mother chose to believe was an honourable occupation, in much the same way that my father had left home for the bank in the morning and returned at six in the evening. My timetabling therefore reassured her, although the day was as often as not spent in the National Gallery or the British Museum, or simply wandering over vast tracts of London, as if seeking another home. It was at times like these that I would wonder how I would manage to live the rest of my life, for even getting a job seemed to be beyond me, as was any other kind of realistic endeavour. I was sore at heart and fatalistic; my main preoccupation was my mother’s state of mind, and I held myself in readiness in case she should need me. And yet my anxiety was so great that I had to leave the flat in the morning, and the diversions I thought I could legitimately award myself would calm me sufficiently to ensure an equable return and the faintly sinister evening that awaited me.